Kees' photos

Photo from 1994, taken with my Zenza Bronica GS-1 (which indeed also has a 6x6 back). Cora was three years old then, and took her time with her ice cone.

1994, again, just an hour or so after the other picture. Cora is sitting amidst the remains of an Early Christian church. No wonder she’s in a meditative mood. Or perhaps she’s still bothered by the sticky fingers she got from the previous ice disaster.

A week ago, I rediscovered my medium format negatives. Scanning’s a bore, and I’ll have to think twice before I single out anyone of them and subject it to that procedure. I took this picture in September 1996 with my Yashica-Mat 6x6 twin-lens reflex camera. Cora was five years old then, just about the age of the girl in the foreground, and hey, she happened to have the same kind of mouse as this kid’s holding. Life is full of coincidences. It is a snapshot, like all of my photos. Yet it has a formal quality which makes it stand out of most of the rest, I think. Anyway, it’s one of my all-time favorites.

I have taken pictures of it before: the referee tower standing on the slope where once brave young men made their jumps in winter -when winters still brought snow, and Icking still attracted visitors. It's of no use anymore, and I probably like it better now than I would have done sixty years ago.

The ski jump seems to be in pretty good shape (until you see the rest of it). On top, you get a nice view of Icking. I think that's reason enough to let it be.

... because my camera can't get close enough. It was a gigantic flower and an enormous bee.

I haven't planted these snails: they come naturally. We should invite some real gourmets for dinner.

Plots with a view.

You knew it happened to ants and spiders: exposed to nuclear radiation, they became monsters, and movie stars. Well, it happens to goldfish too (though this one unfortunately ate its agent and remained obscure). This picture was taken at Ingolstadt, home of Audi cars.

During WW II, when German cities became unsafe, the Thesaurus linguae Latinae archives were for the most part evacuated to the Benedictine Abbey of Scheyern. (Even) more interestingly, some part must have been brought to Icking, 25km south of Munich. After we had moved to that village, our then Managing Director told me that. I still have to dig up the evidence.

Shot, so to speak, from the hip, so only one out of five pictures was actually focused on him, and the rest needed to be trashed.

If you want to be a portrait photographer, you better practice on immobile individuals.

It looks if it hasn’t been used for a long time, but that may be just my imagination. Perhaps I should have moved the chair in the foreground. I would have got a better picture. On the other hand, I would have betrayed my claim for realism.

Jesus walking in between Mary and Joseph seems to be rather unusual, iconographically, but the Jesenwang church , nearby, has the same representation at the right altar, so it may be a local peculiarity.

Last Sunday, we drove around a bit. “Get to know the countryside better...”

These are the big ones, the kind people eat. However, I’d prefer four-legged animals anytime. (No, ye vegetarians, I wouldn’t be able to kill eatable animals myself, and confess to be highly inconsistent: my life is a lie.)

When we first came to Munich and got acquainted with the paintings of Carl Rottmann (which isn’t as strange as it seems, as our address was Rottmannstraße, at the time), we couldn’t believe his spectacular skies and cloud formations had a base in reality. Now, of course, we know better.